


Utena Month 2020

by mosslynx



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F, Not Beta Read, Surrealism, Symbolism, a mix of sweet and heartbreaking, neither you nor i know which each chapter will be until i write it, will update tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosslynx/pseuds/mosslynx
Summary: A collection of drabbles and oneshots for RGU month 2020! Will update daily.
Relationships: Himemiya Anthy/Tenjou Utena
Kudos: 18





	1. Day 1: Tea/Candles

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for animal death and the open ocean in this one!

It's been only a year ~~no it hasn't, it's been five minutes, it's been a decade, three millennia, an eternity~~ , but Utena sits down for tea anyway.

She pours in a packet of sugar and stirs it in gently with a spoon, taking care to never let the cold metal clink against the delicate ceramic.

(The sound grates harshly on her ears, whenever she inevitably slips up, like a sword scraping against her bones.)

She's alone in her bedroom, except for the candelabra precariously balanced on a textbook on the other side of the bed, dripping melted wax onto the cover's portrait of a hummingbird visiting a white lily. The door is locked tightly. Even though her roommate is out, she didn't want to take the risk of them walking in on this.

There's another teacup in front of the candelabra. It contains nothing but a single oleander blossom.

Utena lifts her teacup, then sets it back down. She takes a deep breath and tries to speak. "So, Himemiya-" her breath hitches. "Hime- Himemi-" she tries again, "Hi-" she gives up.

"I miss you," she says, her voice hovering in that awful, uncertain place between a whisper and a murmur. "I know I have no right to, not after what I did. Not after how I failed you. But I do."

She tries to sip the tea. It burns her tongue, hot enough that she can't even taste it. She blows on the tea to cool it off, grateful for the excuse not to speak. What flavor did she make, anyway...? Utena can't remember, she'd just grabbed the first thing she saw, and the only thing she can smell is roses, which is a flavor of tea she _knows_ she doesn't have.

Her roommate knows by now to not bring anything even _resembling_ that plant into their dorm room.

"...I'm sorry, Himemiya," Utena says, and then the tears bubble out of her chest and her hands are shaking. They're covered in scalding tea, now, and it's spilling onto the bed. She wants to get up, wants to set the tea down, wants to find a towel to clean up, but she's paralyzed by the horrible, heaving sobs that wrack her body just as the swords did, so long ago, just as the swords never stopped.

"I'm so, so sorry."

The tea smells like roses.


	2. Day 2: Travel/Reunion

Anthy lifts the bus schedule and attached map to her eyes in the vague, desperate hope that she will perhaps understand it a touch better.

She doesn't. All she sees is the same printer ink, but in slightly greater detail.

The  magenta ink was placed slightly out of  position compared to the yellow and cyan, giving all the text and lines that is allegedly supposed explain how to get from point A to point B in this stars-forsaken city an eerie pink shadow. Anthy doesn't think that it's a sign, but she takes it as one anyway.

She's  escaped the eternal prison of her own design ,  crossed deserts and oceans with nothing but the stars for a guide, and found her way onto the vast frontier of the "global interconnected electronics network" , only to be foiled by poor graphic design.

Were  it any other situation, she would have laughed.

Instead, she simply turns the map upside down. Maybe it'll be easier to read this way?

It isn't. She's almost at the point of simply burning the accursed thing and following its ashes when she hears a voice behind her, a voice that makes her heart stop.

"Hey, uh,  Ma'am? Are you lost? Because you're standing in front of that signpost and I kind of need  to see it in order to..." Anthy turns and for a moment, the world stops moving as she takes in the pink hair, denim jacket, sky blue eyes. "...Himemiya?" Utena asks, her voice wavering and uncertain.

Anthy lets out a wild laugh and launches herself into Utena's arms. She'd overestimated Utena's reaction time, or maybe Utena had underestimated her strength, but either way, she sends them both careening into a nearby shrub.

(There are no thorns, thankfully, but the branches themselves dig into her shoulders. She can't quite bring herself to care, though.)

"I found you," Anthy says, fighting to get the words out through warm tears of joy, "I _found_ you, you're here, you're _here!"_ And she _is,_ she can feel Utena's heart is pounding in her chest and see her breath coming out in sharp gasps that let little wisps of mist into the sky, and her fingers are chilled at tips, and a million other tiny imperfections that she could never quite make out in her dreams, that fill her with the wondrous, absolute certainty that this is _real._

_"Himemiya..."_ Utena whispers, and reaches out a hand to cup Anthy's cheek, as gently and tenderly as she would if Anthy's face were a butterfly's wing. Anthy leans into it, resting her own hand over Utena's and stroking it with her thumb.

"I believe you owe me a cup of tea," Anthy says with a laugh.

Utena groans. "Yeah, in seven years! I was counting!"

"Oh dear... however will we occupy ourselves until then?"

There is a pause. Utena's face is illuminated by a fragile, fledgling hope. "Ourselves...?"

"Oh, Utena..." Anthy says, threading her fingers gently through silky pink hair, "Did you really think I'd go through all the trouble of searching the world for you if I didn't want to live a life with you in it? If you will have me, then I'm staying."

"Of course! Of course you can stay with me." And Utena's smile is its own sun. "Um... did you want to get out of this bush, though? It's not exactly... your style."

"Hmm... not yet," Anthy says, resting her head on Utena's chest. "I think I'm fine right where I am."


	3. Day 3: Stress/vines

Utena groans as the harsh morning sun streams through the window, directly onto her face. She pulls the covers over her head for a few seconds, playing briefly with the idea of simply going back to sleep and resuming her dream. She can barely remember anything from it now, besides the faint scent of rose petals and the feeling of being loved. _I must have been dreaming about the prince again,_ she thinks, _who else could that have been about?_

She supposes she should be thankful to have such pleasant dreams, especially after last night, hearing Kozue's anguished screams as she collapsed to the ground, black rose petals tumbling in the breeze.

At last, Utena throws the covers off of her head and starts climbing down the ladder. She almost slips, but catches herself at the last second. She breaths a sigh of relief. She wouldn't want to make a crash and worry Himemiya.

It is when she is halfway through breakfast, a spoonful of oatmeal with enough sugar to outweigh the oats themselves mixed in, that Utena realizes she hasn't seen or heard from Himemiya all morning.

Strange, Himemiya is usually already in the dining room by the time Utena even opens her eyes.

Utena finishes her breakfast quickly, tasting none of it. The black rose duelists had said they wanted to _kill_ Himemiya. But they had both challenged her formally to a duel. So Himemiya had to be safe, right?

The sudden burst of anxiety sent Utena almost sprinting back to their room. _It's fine. Himemiya is safe. There's nothing to worry about,_ she tells herself, and tries to convince herself to believe it. _Why does this building have to be so big?_

When at last Utena flings open her room's door as quietly as she could (that is, not very quietly at all), she frantically scans the room, before breathing a sigh of relief when she sees that Himemiya was merely curled up in bed, fast asleep.

 _See, Utena? She's been here the whole time,_ s he thinks, _there was no need to stress. You would have known that, if you'd looked._

Utena kneels beside the bed, ready to wake Himemiya up, when she notices something.

Himemiya is crying.

The pillow beneath her head is damp with tears, and she clutches the blanket close to her chest as her body shakes with near-silent sobs. "No..." she whispers, "Don't..."

It is at this moment that Utena realizes Himemiya is dreaming, that her friend was not spared from the nightmares as she was. "Himemiya," she whisper-shouts as she places her hands on Himemiya's shoulder and shakes her as gently as she can, a panicked edge to her voice, "Wake up! It's not real!"

Himemiya's eyes fly open with a gasp. There are tears running down her cheeks, and her eyes dart around the room before focusing on Utena's with an intensity that could melt steel. They seem clearer and more focused without her glasses, somehow.

"Miss Utena, I- I'm sorry you had to see me like that," Himemiya says, trying desperately to gather the serene composure that she wears as a shield. But it's too late, for Utena has seen clearly the stress that has tightened her eyes and weighed down on her neck. She places her hand over Himemiya's and strokes it gently with her thumb.

"Hey, don't worry about it, okay?" she reassures, "You don't have to do that whole 'I have no troubles and am not bothered by anything' routine here. I want you to feel safe." Himemiya looks up at her for a few seconds in silence. Then she leans over, and presses her head into Utena's shoulder. Utena wraps an arm around Himemiya's back. "...Is this about the black rose duelists?"

Himemiya nods, not saying anything.

"I'm not going to let them hurt you, okay? I'll beat every duelist they send at us. I won't lose, I promise."

Himemiya takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I know you won't," she says, voice barely audible.

Utena can't see her face anymore, but she hopes that perhaps some of Himemiya's stress has melted away.


	4. Day 4: Pearls/Ocean

A few years less than ten years later, Nanami is a marine biologist in training. It's far from the career she'd expected, but she quite enjoys studying life in an utterly alien (yet strangely familiar) environment. She's out for a swim right now, and there's still a good thirty minutes of air left in her tank.

It's a bright, sunny day, but she's far enough north that the water is freezing anyway. She doesn't mind this half as much as she thought she would.

She's following a lion's mane jellyfish (from a good, safe distance) right now, watching how it moves and ripples through the water. It looks almost like a dress.

_ It's beautiful, _ she thinks,  _ and that's what makes it dangerous. _

What do the minnows think of,  she wonders, as they swim towards their doom? Do the deadly tendrils look like they might be food? Might be shelter? A respite from the outside world, a fantasy where they can hide away, one they will never return from.

_It looks like a dress. Or a flower, perhaps, though not any sort of flower that is found on the earth._

A sparrow drops into the water far above her, then drifts slowly down. Nanami wonders briefly how it got this far from shore as it sinks past her face, then tucks the thought aside. It probably just got lost, started flying and didn't stop, until it couldn't fly any longer.

Still wouldn't explain how it was a European sparrow in the Pacific, but Nanami is a  _marine_ biologist, and therefore doesn't know enough about birds to question that.

Somewhere far below her, a bunch of marine snow-eating creatures are about to have a really great day.

She looks up. She loves how visible the sun's rays are from this far down. The light is dappled, not shining quite so easily , and that makes the patches that she can see so much more beautiful and precious. Below her there is darkness, vast but not quite infinite. Life exists there too. She could go down as well, but she doesn't have enough air to come back up. Still, maybe one day...

Nanami stops. There is a shadow moving in the distance. It can't be a fish, it's too big... she starts swimming towards it, away from the jellyfish.

It is only then that she realizes she is looking at a blue whale.

The revelation stops her in her tracks... or strokes, as the case may be. The creature is  _huge_ , and even though she'd known on some level how big they could get, nothing could have possibly prepared her for the real thing.

Nanami doesn't dare get any closer. Perhaps it is her training about not approaching vulnerable species, perhaps it is some primal fear of something so incomprehensibly massive, perhaps it is simply respect.

She meets the whale's eyes, and feels a strange connection to it. Distantly, she remembers that whales are closely related to cows, and doesn't quite know why that feels important, somehow.

She watches the whale until it vanishes into the darkness, and then she begins kicking back towards the surface.

As soon as her head breaks through the waves, she wakes up at her desk, a textbook open in front of her.  The page it's open to is about phytoplankton.  She'd fallen asleep...? But it had felt so real...

Then again, it was far from the strangest thing that had happened to her.

Several hundred miles away, in the middle of the northern Pacific, Anthy Himemiya strokes a blue whale's  head lovingly. Utena Tenjou, who has long since stopped questioning things like how the two of them are able to breathe underwater, or why her partner is friends with a blue whale, sits next to her on a hill that doesn't exist. "What's its name, anyway?" she asks, already knowing the answer.

Anthy smiles. "Nanami."


	5. Day 5: Fall/Dinner

On a day like this, with the wind rustling through the trees and the leaves fluttering to the ground, most people would bring out a rake.

Most people are not Anthy. She has no need for such an implement. After all, why use the delicate needle of physical tools when the wrecking ball of godly magical power will do the job just as well?

So that is how she finds herself sitting with her back against a maple tree, absentmindedly reading some poetry collection or other with Chuchu curled up on her shoulder, weaving invisible power through the wind.

The leaves swirl in front of her, at her command and yet utterly uncontrollable. They swirled like  embers ,  like rose petals in the wind.

Anthy frowns as she looks up from her book. She puts a bit more intent into her power.

The leaves take the vague shape of a giant, spinning rose. Then a castle. A car. A prince and a princess, dancing. A witch and someone  _else_ crumpled before her.

Anthy gasps, and loses her grip on the wind. The leaves don't stop, though. They whip around faster and faster, a thousand tiny blades.

She stands up, feels the wind whipping through her hair.

The leaves can't hurt her, she tells herself. None of this can.

"Please," she asks, politely this time, as she casts her shining power back out into the air "Stay in a pile for now. It'll just be a little bit longer, I promise."

The leaves swirl, considering. She gives them the choice. Finally, they coalesce into a pile taller and more perfectly shaped than anything a human could do with a rake. Anthy smiles. "Thank you."

She goes back to her reading.  _And sweetest in the gale is heard, and sore must be the storm..._

The sound of shoes on pavement causes her to look up. "Himemiya!" Utena calls, "I'm home!"

Anthy smiles. "I gathered the leaves for y-" she doesn't even finish the sentence before Utena has launched herself face first into the leaf pile, scattering them everywhere. She's laughing, and so is Anthy as she walks over to lie beside Utena.

Utena's grin is infectious as she reaches out to hold Anthy's hand. "Thank you so much, Himemiya. How'd you do it?"

_ How did the rest of that poem go? Yet never, in extremity... _ Anthy wonders. "I had a little help."


	6. Day 6: AU/Vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do you mean it's not octobor anymore.

When Utena comes to, it is in that strange time between night and dawn, when the sky is a steely gray and the clouds are just beginning to be tinged rose-pink.

She is flat on her back, on the cracked marble in front of the rose gate. It's not open, thankfully. Utena doesn't know  _ what _ she would have done if she had been challenged on the night of a full moon . After all, there's nothing that would have stopped her from just running away from the duel, leaving- _ Himemiya. _

Utena shot up, wincing at the muscle cramps as she braced herself against the gate's handle , the memories rushing back.

She and Himemiya had been talking about... birds? Magnets? Utena couldn't really remember, all she could think of was Himemiya's cool green eyes, her sweet laugh, the way her usually calm demeanor had seemed to warm and to bloom in those slight moments. Utena must have lost track of time, forgotten what night it was.

She had glanced out the windows into the darkness, and then  _realized_ . She had made a hasty excuse, sprinted through the halls, tripping over carpets and running into doorframes , thanking every deity that might have been watching that she and Himemiya had been assigned as the only tenants of the spooky abandoned haunted dorm .

The last thing she remembered was bursting out the door and collapsing to her knees halfway to the forest. She had glanced behind her and seen Himemiya, seeming to glow silver by the light of the just-risen moon, and then...

She didn't remember what happened after that.

Utena closed her eyes and paused for a few breaths, holding herself up with the handle, before she turned around.

Himemiya was there. She had pulled out a lawn chair and was sipping tea. Chuchu was planted face-down on the armrest, snoring shockingly loud for a creature of his size.

Arms shaking, Utena leaned back against the gate in exhaustion and shame. "Himemiya, I-"  _I'm sorry for deceiving you. I'm sorry for letting you see. I'm sorry for playing at being a prince, when I'm the very monster a prince should be fighting._

Himemiya glanced up from her tea. "Ah, Miss Utena! At last, you awaken. I apologize for last night, I had assumed that you had a plan for handling the... situation. Evidently, I was mistaken. Would you like to stay home sick today?"

Utena gaped. "You-You  _knew?"_

"Yes."

"Then why did you support me in the duels? Why didn't you try to run away, or tell someone, or do  _anything_ to be engaged to someone else? Why-" Utena choked back a sob.  Was the role of the Rose Bride truly so horrible as to force Himemiya to stay with a monster?

Himemiya tilted her head, and then let out a single, quiet laugh. "Miss Utena, I am not afraid of you."

Utena gritted her teeth. "Look, I know I try to be noble, and chivalrous, but I can't  _decide_ that on the full moon! I have no control over it! I-"

"You misunderstand, Miss Utena." And all of a sudden, the frosted glass of Himemiya's eyes seemed to clear, revealing that they were as deep as the ocean, and the wind whistled around her like a very old friend, and her voice resonated through the ground and the vines and Utena's very bones. "I am  _not_ afraid of you."

Utena blinked, feeling very small. "Oh."

There was a pause, as Utena considered what Himemiya was telling her. "...How long have you been the Rose Bride?"

Himemiya sipped her tea and didn't answer.

"...I won't tell the others about you, even if you tell them about me. I owe you that much."

The tea was gone, as was the teacup. Utena didn't know where or when they had vanished, but suddenly that didn't matter as Himemiya stood and reached out to hold Utena's hands, and for once, her smile reached her eyes. "Don't worry, Miss Utena," she said, "I can keep this secret, too."


	7. Day 7: Anger/Misunderstandings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains a brief description of a panic attack.

Anthy Himemiya does not want to go to Nanami Kiryuu's party. She tells Utena as much, even throwing in her fear of crowds. Utena, of course, does not listen. Utena wants to be a prince. Utena wants to _save_ her. Utena wants her to make _friends._

Were she not the Rose Bride, not beholden to her Duelist's will, Anthy would have laughed. Friends? With her, the heartless doll? The Rose Bride, who must be whatever the current champion wants? The traitor, the bait for her brother's trap? She cannot have _friends_ , she'd have to be a person first.

...Chuchu is her friend. But she created him. So he hardly counts.

Still, she goes along with it. Utena is the champion, after all. Anthy will do whatever it takes to keep her in the dueling game, because that is her duty.

She would have found it amusing, how Utena seemed to genuinely think she was helping her, but right now? Wearing a fragile green dress that seemed all too similar to the red one from oh so long ago, facing a crowd of students, soon to be abandoned to them?

Anthy couldn't quite find it in her to be mirthful, even in the most bitter of ways.

She's not surprised when Utena is pulled away from her by the red-haired would-be prince (though there is a twinge, somewhere deep within her chest, that she tries to convince herself is a sword).

She's not surprised when Nanami leaves her in the middle of the crowd (their faces blur together and her heart is pounding and she wants so badly to be asleep in her coffin, not dreaming of this).

She's not surprised when the boy sprays champagne all over her (everyone is staring, she can hear their phantom voices calling for her blood, she _doesn't want to be here_ ).

She's not surprised when the dress itself dissolves, when she sinks to her knees, made vulnerable in front of everyone here (the swords are coming, she can't do this again,  _I can't DO this again, I CAN'T DO THIS AGAIN, NOT WITHOUT YOU-_ ).

She is surprised when there is a crash from somewhere  behind her,  and she turns around and Utena is standing there in her dueling outfit  _(how did she get that...?)._ "Miss Utena..."  _help me get me out of here you're the champion you want to be a prince you never will but you try to save princesses that's what you're supposed to DO-_

Utena smiles, in her oblivious, insufferable way. "Let's dance, Himemiya," she says, and rips the nearest tablecloth out from under the flowers and glasses set on top of it, heedless of the destruction she'd caused. She wraps it around Anthy's body as a makeshift dress, and holds her hand for a dance.

Anthy smothers her disappointment and anger deep within her (where she keeps all the swords), and puts on a blank smile.

She is the Rose Bride, after all.

She must be whatever the champion wants.


End file.
